Movie Cosmos - Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood

Description:

A deliciously scandalous portrait of unsung Hollywood legend Scotty Bowers, whose bestselling memoir chronicled his decades spent as sexual procurer to the stars.

Top Cast >

Scotty Bowers

As Self

William Mann

As Self

David Kuhn

As Self

Stephen Fry

As Self

Peter Bart

As Self

Lois Bowers

As Self

Matthew Hoffman

As Self

Paul Teetor

As Self

Jack Kimberling

As Self

Michael Childers

As Self

Lee Shook

As Self

Robert Hofler

As Self

Dian Hanson

As Self

Tony Charmoli

As Self

Paul LaMastra

As Self

Phyllis Bowers

As Sef (voice)

Dale Bowers

As Self (voice)

Liz Smith

As Self

Myke Dodge Weiskopf

As Self

Randolph Scott

As Self (archive footage)

Laurence Olivier

As Self (archive footage)

Ramon Novarro

As Self (archive footage)

Orry-Kelly

As Self (archive footage)

Vivien Leigh

As Self (archive footage)

Elsa Lanchester

As Self (archive footage)

Rock Hudson

As Self (archive footage)

J. Edgar Hoover

As Self (archive footage)

Katharine Hepburn

As Self (archive footage)

William Holden

As Self (archive footage)

Cary Grant

As Self (archive footage)

Whoopi Goldberg

As Self (archive footage)

Ava Gardner

As Self (archive footage)

Greta Garbo

As Self (archive footage)

Tom Ewell

As Self (archive footage)

Beach Dickerson

As Self (archive footage)

Bette Davis

As Self (archive footage)

George Cukor

As Self (archive footage)

Joseph I. Breen

As Self (archive footage)

Lauren Bacall

As Self (archive footage)

Jennifer Aniston

As Self (archive footage)

Judith Anderson

As Self (archive footage)

Walter Pidgeon

As Self (archive footage)

Cole Porter

As Self (archive footage)

Elvis Presley

As Self (archive footage)

Sherri Shepherd

As Self (archive footage)

Spencer Tracy

As Self (archive footage)

Lana Turner

As Self (archive footage)

Barbara Walters

As Self (archive footage)

Edwin B. Willis

As Self (archive footage)

Wallis Simpson

As Self (archive footage)

Top Crew >

Matt Tyrnauer

Director

Reviews:

cityguide

“Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood” wears a lot of hats, none of which quite fits. A salacious tell-all about the hidden sex lives of postwar movie stars; a peek at the underbelly of the repressive moral dictates of the studio system; a breezy biography of a self-described Hollywood prostitute and procurer; and a psychosexual study of a possibly damaged victim of extreme childhood abuse.

Only the last offers a clue to interpreting the movie’s more astonishing revelations and unprobed corners. Until then, Matt Tyrnauer’s gossipy portrait of Scotty Bowers, an impish nonagenarian and former Marine, listens without judgment as he describes decades of servicing the closeted hungers of stars like Rock Hudson and Katharine Hepburn, helped by an eager network of World War II buddies. Back then, in a couple of trailers behind a gas station on Hollywood Boulevard, $20 could buy just about anything.

Meandering behind Mr. Bowers as he shares faded photographs of extravagantly endowed young men and prurient factoids about his famous “tricks” — cheekily illustrated with scenes from classic movies that read rather differently in hindsight — Mr. Tyrnauer surreptitiously hoses away the layers of dirt to reveal the fragility of his subject’s anything-goes hedonism. Benevolent hustler (he never took a cut of others’ action) or naughty fabulist — perhaps both — Mr. Bowers putters around his hoarded Hollywood Hills home and gazes into the hole in his patio deck as if searching for something lost long ago.

Consequently, what starts out salty ends up as something sadder and more complicated. And when he unabashedly recalls a childhood rife with sexual encounters — which he insists were consensual — with adults, the camera fixes on his mile-wide grin and we wonder if his mission to meet the needs of others has somehow ignored his own.

2018-08-03